Rutland is set to replace the website residents use to report problems after it was declared by the council's leader as 'totally unsatisfactory'. 

Leader of Rutland County Council Gale Waller (Lib Dem) has said the Fix My Street app, which the council uses on its website to allow residents to alert the authority to issues such as fly-tipping and potholes, is in the process of being replaced – with a new system hopefully up and running in the new year. 

She made the announcement at a recent scrutiny meeting, in which the committee were discussing feedback from councillors about which issues were being raised in their wards. 



Councillor Gale Waller of Rutland County Council describes 'Fix my Streets' as 'definately an issue' (Photo: Rutland County Council)

Committee member Stephen Lambert (Lib Dem) had said there was an issue with Fix My Street and a 'perception that things just vanish into it' and the leader told him there is no response loop back to the resident to tell them what is happening with their reported problem. 

She said: "Fix my Street is definitely an issue. Fix My Street is a national piece of software. When Rutland originally bought it a lot of years ago, they didn't buy all its functionality. And as bits get updated and upgraded, clearly, if you haven't got the functionality, you're not getting all the upgrades.  

"In any case it didn't, even at the outset. do everything we wanted it to, and I don't think it ever could because of the way it was designed. 

"So, you put something on it, which then gets passed to highways to be actioned. It gets actioned one way or the other, but there is no response loop back to the person who put it on the first place. So, you know your pothole got repaired because you've seen it, but when it's judged not to need repairing, you don't get the feedback, saying it's not deep enough, or its not wide enough, or whatever the problem might be. Now the council is aware of this and is looking to have a new system."  

Current 'Fix my Street' webpage (Photo: Rutland County Council)

The authority has introduced a new platform called Salesforce which will have other systems built on top of it. The new problem reporting platform will use Salesforce and at the meeting cabinet member for governance and resources Councillor Andrew Johnson (Lib Dem) said different departments will be aligned to the new Salesforce platform over the coming year. 

Committee member David Wilby (Con) asked why the authority could not inform the parishes of when a problem was reported in their area so they could track it and Coun Waller said the authority did not have the staff resource to do so. She said the new salesforce system is supposed to be able to help the authority respond better to customers after problems are reported. 

According the council's website, 48 reports have been made via Fix my Street in the last week and 69 fixes have occurred in the past month. 

The scrutiny committee, which is chaired by Councillor Lucy Stephenson (Con), decided to do a piece of work looking at complaints and compliments coming into the authority.